“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence,
so that we
may receive mercy and find grace /to help us in our time of need.”
(Hebrews 4:16 NIV)
The writer to the Hebrews nails down the most central activity of all
for Christians: “Let us then approach the throne of grace…” It doesn’t
say, “Let us come to the sermon.” We in America have made the sermon
the centerpiece of the church, something God never intended. [Preachers
//who are really doing their job] get people to come to the throne of
grace. That’s the true source of grace and mercy.
To every preacher and every singer, God will someday ask, “Did you
bring people to where the action could be found … at the throne of
grace? If you just entertained them, if you just tickled their ears and
gave them a warm, fuzzy moment, woe unto you. At the throne of grace, I
could have changed their lives. Jim Cymbala, did you just dazzle
people with your cleverness, or did you make them hungry to come to me?”
If a meeting doesn’t end with people touching God, what kind of a
meeting is it? We haven’t really encountered God.
We haven’t met with
the only One powerful and loving enough to change our lives.
I am well aware that we don’t get everything () we ask for; we have to ask
/according to God’s will. But let us not use theological dodges /to
avoid the fact //that we often go without things () God wants us to have
right now, today, because we fail to ask. Too seldom do we get honest
enough to admit, “Lord, I can’t handle this alone. I’ve just hit the
wall for the thirty-second time and I need you.”
God has chosen prayer as his channel of blessing. He has spread a
table for us /with every kind of wisdom, grace, and strength /because he
knows exactly what we need. But [the only way we can get it] is to pull
up to the table and taste and see that the Lord is good.
[Pulling up to that table] is called the prayer of faith. In other
words, God doesn’t tell us to pray because he wants to impose some sort
of regimen on us… This is not a system of legalism… [Instead] God says
to us, “Pray, because I have all kinds of things for you; and when you
ask, you will receive. I have all this grace, and you live with
scarcity. Come unto me, all you who labor. Why are you so rushed?
Where are you running now? Everything you need, I have.”
* scarcity : a situation in which something is not easy to find or get:
-Jim Cymbala (excerpted from Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)
Read Hebrews 4:14-16.